"The Girl on the Train"

“The Girl on the Train” is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. Being someone who enjoys analyzing situations, I enjoy a good murder mystery that is exactly what “The Girl on the Train” is. What’s intriguing about this film is that it’s confusing from the start and every time you think you understand something you realize you were wrong and are set right back to square one.

The story is told from the perspective of Rachel, a woman who divorced her husband, Tom, because she found out he was cheating on her with their real estate agent Anna. It just so happens that Rachel is not only a heart broken victim of infidelity, but she’s also an alcoholic who drinks to the point of blacking out and not remembering anything she did while drunk. Not over the fact that she was cheated on, she stalks Tom, calling Tom over and over and even going to his house several times.

In order to help herself deal with her pain, Rachel begins to watch Tom’s next door neighbors as she travels to and from New York City on a train. She views the couple as the epitome of what a loving relationship is supposed to be, becoming almost as obsessed with them as she is with Tom and Anna.

Of course, the neighbors are Megan and her husband Scott and their relationship is anything but loving. For one thing, Scott is extremely controlling and possessive. Megan is prone to having multiple affairs and is practically attached from her marriage. She goes to a therapist in the attempt to address her issues, but ends up having an affair with him as well.

While on her routine train ride into the city, Rachel sees Megan with someone who isn’t Scott. This abruptly snaps Rachel out of her fantasy and upsets her to the point where she begins to drink and eventually passes out.

The last person to come across Megan is a drunken Rachel, who yells at her for cheating. After their encounter, Megan goes missing and is found dead several days later. Rachel wakes up in her own home with a bloody gash over her eye and can’t remember how she got hurt.

After her body is found, it is discovered that Megan was pregnant. However, it’s neither the child of her husband or of the therapist she had an affair with. So the question is raised: who killed Megan? Was it an angry Rachel who couldn’t deal with witnessing another heartbreaking affair? Did Scott find out he was being cheated on?

I certainly sat and went through each scenario during the course of the film and more than once it seemed one of my theories would be true, but as soon as I became too confident that I had cracked the mystery something would come out that completely unraveled my entire idea.

The ending was definitely not what I had expected and for that reason I enjoyed it all the more.